The operations database (by default, igops) maintains a history of activities that occur in Identity Governance. For example, as part of the data collection process, the database stores the previous state of that collection to ensure that Identity Governance can return to that state if an error occurs. Over time, however, the size of the database increases with each new collection, publication, review, and other operations. This can have an adverse impact on the performance of some database queries, because they are having to filter through more and more irrelevant historical data. Identity Governance includes the Database Maintenance feature, which provides capabilities for data administrators and global administrators to archive older data in a separate archive database, and then allows historical data to be cleaned up from the operations database.
The Database Maintenance feature provides the following:
Shows running summaries of database updates and items that can be purged
Allows you to drill down to more specific data from summary items
Shows categorized lists of archive and cleanup activities
Allows you to disable running archive
Shows the latest complete archive details
Allows you to start the database maintenance process, with optional database cleanup
When doing database cleanup, Identity Governance searches the operations database for purgeable items that are older than the number of retention days you specify. If you do not specify a number of retention days, Identity Governance cleans up anything that can be purged. It will not purge data that is still in a state where it may be needed for current operations. For more information about how the utility decides which items can be purged, see Section 8.3, Identifying Purgeable Data. If archiving is enabled, data will always be archived to the archive database before it is purged from the operations database. Database cleanup will not be performed if an archive fails to complete. You can disable archiving to bypass this restriction, but it is not recommended.
When starting database maintenance, Identity Governance does not start archiving or cleanup until all current operations (collections, publications, scheduled processes, starting reviews, and so forth) have been completed or idled cleanly. Furthermore, it prevents starting any new operations while archiving and cleanup are in progress. Normal Identity Governance operations are automatically resumed when maintenance tasks are completed or canceled. This is done to ensure that Identity Governance cannot update the operations database while an archive or cleanup is in progress. In this way Identity Governance guarantees that all updates to the operational database made by normal Identity Governance activities are archived to the archive database, and nothing is purged from the operations database until it has been properly archived. Disabling archive can result in the loss of historical operational data.
An administrator has the ability to cancel archive and cleanup tasks while they are running. Usually, both archive and cleanup tasks are run automatically one after the other, and when they are completed, normal Identity Governance operations are automatically resumed. However, an administrator may also choose to pause after the archive phase, after the cleanup phase or both. If you choose to pause after the archive phase, you must manually resume and continue to the cleanup phase or cancel the cleanup phase and return to normal operations. If you choose to pause after the cleanup phase, you must manually return to normal operations. These optional pauses give administrators opportunities to suspend Identity Governance maintenance at key points and do other maintenance tasks they may deem important before proceeding. For example, they want to look at the database, copy the database, troubleshoot issues, and so forth. The recommended and default mode of operation for maintenance is to allow Identity Governance to automatically move through the maintenance phases and then automatically return to normal operations.